History Techhttps://historytech.wordpress.com
History, technology, and probably some other stuffTue, 03 Mar 2015 18:02:52 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngHistory Techhttps://historytech.wordpress.com
Travel and geography as a political acthttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/travel-and-geography-as-a-political-act/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/travel-and-geography-as-a-political-act/#commentsMon, 02 Mar 2015 16:34:20 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21490]]>Every once in a while, while traveling around the country, I’ll get the chance to meet and chat with one of them. My daughter calls them fanboys. You might call them uberfans. A polite term might be avid followers. But we’ve all met someone like this. People who just can’t get enough of The Avengers or the Kansas Jayhawks or House of Cards or whatever they’ve decided is the thing around which their world rotates.

And whenever I run into this particular type of fanboy, I have to smile. Because they are so passionate and fun to be around.

I’m talking, of course, about the people who just can’t get enough of Rick Steves. And if you’ve never heard of Rick Steves, well . . . you just haven’t had the chance to spend time with one of his uberfans. Because if you had, you would have definitely heard all about him. They take their love of Rick to a whole new level.

I get it. Rick Steves is the ultimate in travel advice. He has books, TV shows, radio, podcasts, websites, articles, and blog posts – all talking about and sharing information about travel. Where to go. What to take with you. The best places to eat. To stay. The best museums. Suggestions for planes, trains, and automobiles. He does it all and he’s been doing it for a long time.

All of this to say that Rick Steves knows travel. And he has a ton of followers who know he knows travel. So when he shares his ideas about the whys and hows of travel, it’s probably a good idea to listen to what he has to say.

And while I’m not a Steves uberfan, there is one message he shares that I really like.

Travel connects people with people. It helps us fit more comfortably and compatibly into a shrinking world. And it inspires creative new solutions to persistent problems facing our nation. We can’t understand our world without experiencing it. Traveling as a Political Act helps us take that first step.

There’s more to travel than good-value hotels, great art, and tasty cuisine. Americans who “travel as a political act” can have the time of their lives and come home smarter – with a better understanding of the interconnectedness of today’s world and just how our nation fits in.

This is not about politics in the sense of conservative vs. liberal, Democrat vs. Republican. It’s about the idea that the more we know about other people and cultures, the better we as a country and people can impact the world in a positive way.

I like the idea. Seriously like the idea.

A recent article in the Wichita paper caught my eye and reminded me of why I like the idea so much. You need to go and read through his longer online essay but I’ve pasted parts of the newspaper article below.

Not just because it makes sense and should be something we should be doing whenever we travel but because it’s a great reminder of why and how we should be teaching geography.

More on that in a minute.

The great value of travel is the opportunity it offers you to “pry open your hometown blinders and broaden your perspective.” And Rick suggests that when we implement that world view as citizens of our great nation, we make travel a political act. Five tips for doing just that:

Connect with people, and try to understand them
Make itinerary decisions that put you in touch with locals. Stay in people’s homes and spend time with your hosts. Visit a university, eat in the cafeteria, and make a new friend. Seek answers for cultural riddles: Why do some Hindus feed their cows better than their children? Why do many Muslim women wear scarves? Why do Norwegians so willingly pay high taxes?

Be a cultural chameleon
Embrace cultural differences with joy rather than with judgment. Eat with your fingers in a Sri Lankan restaurant that has no silverware, dip your fries in mayonnaise in Belgium, smoke a hookah in Greece, kiss a stranger on both cheeks in France, or attend a hurling match in Ireland. Rather than gawking at pilgrims, become one. Climb Rome’s Holy Stairs on your knees, feeling the pain while finding comfort in the frescoes of saints all around you.

Understand contemporary context
While traveling, read the local news. Scan “The Times of India” in Mumbai. Go to a political rally in Scotland. Listen to expat radio on Spain’s Costa del Sol. Think about how all societies are on parallel evolutionary tracks. Imagine how the American approach to vexing societal problems might work in other places – and (more importantly) vice versa.

Identify – and undermine – your own ethnocentricity
The United States has been preoccupied with terrorism for the last generation. But other nations have their own, sometimes heavier baggage. Ponder societal needs even more fundamental than freedom and democracy. Why is Putin so popular in Russia? Why would a modern, well-educated Egyptian be willing to take a bullet for the newest military dictator (as my friend in Cairo just told me)? Why, in some struggling countries, does stability trump democracy?

Accept the legitimacy of other moralities
Be open to the possibility that controversial activities are not objectively “right” or “wrong.” Consider Germany’s approach to prostitution or the Netherlands’ marijuana policy, both of which are based on pragmatic harm reduction rather than moralism. Get a French farmer’s take on force-feeding his geese to produce foie gras. Ask a Spaniard why bullfighting still thrives – and why it’s covered not in the sports pages, but in the arts section of the local newspaper. You don’t have to like their answer, but at least try to understand it.

The problem with all of this is that many of your students do not or cannot travel. I meet lots of teachers whose students haven’t ever left their county, let alone their state or the US. So can we take some of Rick’s ideas and apply them our geography classrooms?

I think we can.

You may already be doing this but geography is more that just having kids memorize the seven continents and numbing our students with lectures on the five themes of geography. It should be more than asking kids to write reports about the different regions of the United States. And it’s definitely more than being able to recite the 50 state capitals.

Yesterday’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon describes what geography instruction should not look like.

Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic landscape of dreams.

Geography instruction can and should be a way for us to connect with place and people in ways that go beyond simple recitation of facts. If you’re looking for a way to do that, Rick Steves is a great place to start:

What works for you? How do you teach geography so that your students “pry open their hometown blinders and broaden their perspective?”

Filed under: 21st century skills, cultures, current events, geography, travel]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/travel-and-geography-as-a-political-act/feed/4rick steves fanglennwScreen Shot 2015-03-02 at 10.00.46 AMTip of the Week: Sourcing Overlay Strategyhttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/tip-of-the-week-sourcing-overlay-strategy/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/tip-of-the-week-sourcing-overlay-strategy/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 15:16:23 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21305]]>First things first. If you haven’t hung out at Russell Tarr’s Toolbox, you need to head over there when we’re finished here. Russell has been creating and sharing cool tools for social studies teachers forever and it’s all incredibly handy stuff. (You might have run across Russell’s ideas before on his Active History or ClassTools.net sites.)

About a month ago, I was on his site and ran across something that I thought was very cool. I’d been searching for ideas on how to help elementary kids source evidence. You know – author, date created, audience, intent, the sort of questions that are the foundation of historical thinking.

My goto strategy has been one shared by the Library of Congress that helps kids all the way down to kindergarten start the process of historical thinking – by training them to ask questions about primary sources. The LOC example focuses on the idea ofThen and Now by having kids examine images of turn of the century vs current mail delivery.

The teacher works whole group and then small group, asking kids to source the image by circling items they see in the image. And I loved the idea of slipping hard copy images into a plastic sleeve that kids could draw on, preserving the original image for reuse but also allowing kids to erase and redo.

For non-readers, this sort of guided practice is perfect. But what might it look like in upper elementary or even in middle or high school? Why can’t we use this same type of activity with older kids? The answer, of course, is that we can. And many of you do – using digital projection or actual hard copies of photographs and text.

But I like the idea of the plastic sleeve.

And that’s where we circle back to Tarr’s Toolbox. Using an idea he saw on Twitter, Russell developed a Source Evaluation Overlay template that includes sourcing questions along two sides.

How cool is that? A reusable sourcing scaffold that encourages critical thinking and helps kids focus on asking great questions. Once you head over and download the template, cut out the middle and laminate for long term use. (And, seriously, be sure to check out all of his goodies while you’re over there.)

Russell has a few suggestions for using the overlay:

Ask students to focus on the issues highlighted in the left-hand column first and make annotations as appropriate. Then they swap with a partner, read the work done so far, and focus on the issues covered in the top row. Display the work when it’s finished.

Ensure each student has a different source. When the work is finished, remove the sources from the templates. Different students have to match the overlay to the source it was originally evaluating.

All very cool stuff. And it got me thinking. So I quickly slapped together a Source Overlay template based on questions from a chart put together by the Stanford History Education Group.

I know it’s pretty basic but feel free to download it and adapt so that it works for you. (It’s on you to cut out the middle area and laminate it.) I’m sure you’ll think of all sorts of ways this might look in your own classroom.

Have fun!

Filed under: C4, graphic organizer, historical thinking, primary sources, strategies, tip of the week]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/tip-of-the-week-sourcing-overlay-strategy/feed/3elementary sourcingglennwloc railcarloc kindergartenSource overlay picsheg overlayFellowship of the Brick – Using Minecraft to recreate historyhttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/fellowship-of-the-brick-using-minecraft-to-recreate-history/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/fellowship-of-the-brick-using-minecraft-to-recreate-history/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 15:13:42 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21328]]>The more I talk with elementary and middle school social studies teachers, the more I realize that a ton of their kids are playing Minecraft. My question to the teachers is pretty simple. How can you leverage the interest in this tool and begin to incorporate Minecraft into the learning that happens in your classroom?

And the response has been fairly positive. A number of teachers are working to find ways to use Minecraft as part of their instruction. Yesterday, I wrote a quick post about my own experience of being the type of teacher that focused instruction around the memorization of content knowledge, rather than the authentic use of that knowledge.

It was Trivia Crack instruction – random facts that mean nothing without context.

Over time, I moved away from that and begin to realize that there are a ton of ways for kids to learn and for me to teach. One of those methods is to integrate the use of games and simulations into the learning process. The cool thing about games and sims is that to be successful while playing often requires “non-traditional” types of classroom learning: non-fiction and technical reading / writing, research, teamwork, cross-curricular content, emotional connections to content, cause and effect, and the use of lots and lots of evidence.

Another cool thing about the use of Minecraft is the fairly easy ability to mod – modify – the game. Many current games have this feature built in but Minecraft software is basic enough so that even elementary kids are doing it.

And several weeks ago, I got an email from a group of middle schools students at a school in Wisconsin who are busy doing exactly that. They call themselves “The Fellowship of the Brick” and are developing their own idea of using Minecraft as an instruction tool. Part of their project is to share their idea at a variety of academic competitions. And apparently they’ve done pretty well, ramping up for a run at the state championship.

I love that they started with a compelling question:

How can we improve the way someone learns history?

Their solution?

. . . making short Minecraft videos for kids so they don’t get bored in class. They would be video reenactments about moments in History with commentary. We thought of our solution because almost everyone on our team likes to play Minecraft. Also, since so many people watch Minecraft videos, we thought that many people would want to watch historical Minecraft videos. Teacher feedback would help us see how our idea would do in the common classroom.

They put together a short demonstration to show what it might look like in the game itself. They used one of my favorite moments in history – the Battle of Crecy – to illustrate their point. The cool part of all of this is that both the kids making the Minecraft short and the kids watching the Minecraft short all get smarter.

Video games and sims like Minecraft make powerful emotional connections to foundational content, helping to create long-term retention of not just the facts of specific events but a broader understanding of context and connections to other events and ideas. And when kids themselves are the ones actually creating the game? It’s a no-brainer.

So . . . Wesley, Brevon, Ryan, Evan, Wilder, Miranda, Levi, Curt, Aryanna. If you haven’t already competed in the state championship, good luck. If you have, no matter the result, you guys are awesome. Love the idea. Love the Battle of Crecy reenactment. And I’m looking forward to seeing more of your work.

For the rest of you, here’s a quick list of a few Minecraft resources to get you started:

Filed under: 21st century skills, apps, technology integration, video games]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/fellowship-of-the-brick-using-minecraft-to-recreate-history/feed/0minecraftedu logoglennwDon’t be that guy. You know . . . that guy. The Trivia Crack guy.https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/dont-be-that-guy-you-know-that-guy-the-trivia-crack-guy/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/dont-be-that-guy-you-know-that-guy-the-trivia-crack-guy/#commentsTue, 24 Feb 2015 22:50:35 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21412]]>I used to be that guy. The Trivia Crack guy. It was all I knew.

Lecture. Have kids outline the lecture. Grade the notes, hoping for just about any sort of organizational structure. Quizzes along the way. Maybe a worksheet. Throw in a map to color. Test at the end of the chapter.

Most of my own history instruction followed this pattern. And I was great at this sort of stuff. 105 Kansas counties? No problem. When did Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address? Yup. I got that. Causes of World War One? MAIN acronym. Boom.

And if you’re old enough to remember the analog Trivia Crack version called Trivia Pursuit, you’re gonna have to trust me – I owned that game. Seriously. Steve Schmidt and I were unbeatable.

I followed the same pattern. Lecture. (Though I did make an allowance for my middle schoolers by putting my notes on the overhead. And yes. It was the kind that had a roll of plastic that I cranked to bring up more of my carefully crafted outline.) Quiz. Worksheet. Test.

Because I thought that was what good teaching looked like.

But the longer I taught like that, the more confused I got. A few of my kids did great. Straight As. Most did average at best. And the rest? Poorly. Plus they were disruptive. Disengaged. Perfect examples of the typical middle school kid. Why weren’t more of my kids doing well?

It took me a while. And more than just a few conversations with some excellent mentors – thank you, Mike Ortmann – before I started to realize that there were multiple ways for me to teach social studies. And a whole bunch of ways for kids to learn besides copying down my carefully crafted outline. And almost of all them more effective than the one I was using.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, and certainly didn’t know what to call it, I began to find more effective ways of engaging kids in content. In today’s context, we call it historical thinking. Inquiry arcs. Problem-based learning. Using evidence to solve problems. It’s more than training kids to memorize data and be good at Trivia Crack. It’s more than dried up facts about dead people, boring events, and long ago dates.

Several years ago, I posted a quote from James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Teacher Got Wrong:

Kids don’t hate history. They hate the way we teach it.

I couldn’t agree more.

Kids don’t hate talking about history or even lecture. Not if it’s done in small chunks, in engaging style with images and great questions and small groups and problems to solve. What they hate is required, graded outlined notes without context or purpose. They hate 45 minute monologues without a chance to ever interact with the content. They hate listening to what Loewen calls a list of stuff presented as “one damn thing after another.”

Kids don’t hate historical characters. Not when we tell them stories of actual people and how they survived the Kansas winter of 1874 or a teenager’s experience during the Montgomery Bus Boycott or a trip from Haiti to the Florida Keys on a homemade raft or an escape from a World War II concentration camp or . . . well, just about any event well told. What they hate are long lists of people that show up on the matching section of chapter tests for no reason at all.

Kids don’t hate maps. Maps tell incredible stories. They draw the viewer in with what Robert Lewis Stevenson called the power of “infinite, eloquent suggestion.” Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps, understands what a good map can do:

Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic landscape of dreams.

Kids hate adding all of the major rivers and bodies of water to a bare outline map of the United States. They hate being graded on whether they used the correct color for labeling the 105 counties of Kansas.

Kids don’t hate reading and writing. My college-age son and his friends are huge fans of The Game of Thrones. They watch the show. Read the books. And talk about the series in all sorts of ways. K-12 kids aren’t any different about their own favorite stories. They’ve got the hard copies, they write fan fiction, they read and comment on blogs. They read immense amounts of non-fiction and informational text. What they hate is not having any choice in what they read and write about. What they hate is writing for just their classroom teachers and not someone “real.” They hate using paper and pencil when computers and mobile devices are everywhere.

Kids don’t hate doing homework. Ask them to do something authentic like making an iMovie trailer or playing a video game or talking to Iraqi war vets and they will jump all over it. What they hate is dragging home packets of worksheets that are basically copy and paste with a pencil. They hate having homework count as 50% of their grade and being called cheaters if they work with others to solve problems.

Kids don’t hate memorizing stuff. Are you kidding me? They memorize stuff all the time. Songs, video game walk-throughs, movie plots, the names of every one of the kids in the 4th grade class they visit once a week for Big Brothers / Big Sisters. What they hate is memorizing stuff that they know they will never actually use. What they hate is that they know we know they will never use that stuff. They hate being graded on their ability to memorize stuff that they can find on Google or with Siri in 60 seconds.

They don’t hate history. Not when it’s done well – with relevancy and choice and small groups and engaging problems and interesting documents and outside experts and technology and authentic products.

They hate that we too often teach history as if we’re prepping them for the Trivia Crack World Series.

And I think that sometimes, especially at this time of year, sometimes we forget what it’s like to be a student on the receiving end of the Trivia Crack instructional strategy. If you’re in the February rut, browse through some historical thinking ideas here. You might even head over to the Session Materials page from yesterday’s Kansas social studies conference.

But whatever you do. Don’t be that guy. You know . . . that guy. The Trivia Crack guy.

Filed under: 21st century skills, apps, historical thinking, strategies, teaching, video games]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/dont-be-that-guy-you-know-that-guy-the-trivia-crack-guy/feed/14trivia crackglennwTip of the Week: Consensus Debatehttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/tip-of-the-week-consensus-debate/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/tip-of-the-week-consensus-debate/#commentsFri, 20 Feb 2015 19:40:52 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21390]]>“What thoughtful, intelligent people do with their brains is to mull over inconsistency. When two ideas are in conflict and you have to struggle to make sense of that conflict, that is when thinking starts.”

One of the many topics that a group of teachers and I messed with earlier this week was the idea of using debates in class. How can we set up activities during which kids support specific positions using evidence – which is good – without having the debate disintegrate into emotional arguing – which is bad?

And you gotta know . . . as a former coach, much of my earlier life revolved around the concept of winners and losers. Of creating an environment that encouraged and supported winning.

But sports is not the same as historical thinking or working together to solve problems. The win at all cost attitude that exists is competitive sports is not the attitude that makes for successful compromise in a democracy – no matter what we witness in Congress or on cable talk shows.

America’s greatness is reflected in its ability to innovate, analyze complex problems, ask cogent questions, assemble and evaluate critical data, and seek creative solutions, going beyond the recall of factual information. These are the skills of a democratic citizen, and failure to teach them threatens the future of the United States.

To be an American citizen requires developing a democratic mind – the intellectual ability to entertain contradictory or opposing ideas, hold tentative judgments, and make decisions based on facts supported by evidence. This critical thinking is essential to the study of many subjects, but is particularly important when studying history, civics, geography, and economics. None of us are born with this capability. Author Sam Wineburg describes this sort of critical thinking as an “un-natural act.” So it must be taught. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1824, “The qualifications for self- government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.”

So we spent some time talking about and experiencing a variety of tools that support this idea of entertaining contradictory or opposing ideas, holding tentative judgments, and making decisions based on facts supported by evidence.

One of the things we discussed is called a Structured Academic Conversation. It’s been around a while but I first learned about it on the Stanford History Education Group’s Reading Like a History site. Several years ago, I shared a few thoughts on the strategy and I still like it as a tool to help kids learn to argue with evidence and to build consensus.

But I think that one of the teachers in group has come up with another strategy that looks pretty good too. Jon Bauer from the St. John metro area developed something that he calls a

Consensus Debate.

Jon’s reasons for developing the activity are similar to what teachers talked about earlier this week:

And I love that he pulled Malcolm Gladwell into the discussion.

When two ideas are in conflict and you have to struggle to make sense of that conflict, that is when thinking starts.

Consensus Debate is similar to a Structured Academic Conversation but the last step is a little different. Jon creates three rounds. During the first round students have an assigned role. During the second, they get to choose a side and then during the third round the entire class has to create a consensus statement.

Jon suggests a few things for Consensus Debate to be successful:

Start with a great question or statement

Provide good evidence

Don’t try to evaluate and grade the debate but instead become an active participant

I really like his suggestions for helping students ask better questions during the activity:

Students Are Unclear:

“Let me clarify what you said . . . “

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you said that . . .”

Students Fail to Use Sources:

“Can you back up that point with material from the sources?”

Students Are Missing an Important Point:

“Has anyone thought about . . .”

“Have you considered that . . .”

The example Jon shared is on fracking. But he also talked about using the idea with 8th graders using the topic of Indian removal during the early 1800s. His question?

Did Jackson’s removal policies benefit Native Americans?

So like the Structured Academic Conversation, Jon’s Consensus Debate can focus on a wide variety of topics in all of the different content areas.

The Electoral College should be eliminated.

African Americans were not free after the Civil War.

The minimum wage is too low.

The Germany First policy during World War Two ensured massive casualties in the Pacific Theater that could have been prevented.

The Renaissance could not have happened without the Reformation.

I’ve generated statements. But I think questions would work just as well.

Should the Electoral College be eliminated?

Were African Americans really free after the Civil War?

Is the minimum wage too low?

Could massive casualties in the Pacific Theater been prevented if the Allies had truly fought a two ocean war during World War Two?

Would the Renaissance have happened without the Reformation?

Curious? Download Jon’s instructions and example. Remember that these are rough drafts as he continues to experiment with the idea. I’m sure he’d love to hear from others about what you like, questions you have, and suggestions for improvement. Be kind as you post those below in the comments.

Have fun!

Filed under: best practice, civics, debate, government, historical thinking, standards, tip of the week]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/tip-of-the-week-consensus-debate/feed/4cable news debateglennwdebate vs consensusEducational Talk Radio, podcasts, and personal primary sourceshttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/blog-talk-radio-podcasts-and-personal-primary-sources/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/blog-talk-radio-podcasts-and-personal-primary-sources/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 19:28:53 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21364]]>Over the last few months, I’ve tried to be more intentional about listening to and creating more podcasts. I’ve always loved the concept of podcasts – accessing content, anywhere, anytime. Tons of people have shared with me that they love listening to podcasts while they drive places.

That’s not something I can do – listening to stuff while I drive just ends sounding like the adult voices in the Peanuts shows. I get nothing. But if that works for you . . .

Because podcasts are more than just something for us to use as a way to kill time during a commute. Podcasts can also act as a great way to connect content with students and for students to demonstrate knowledge / skills.

So. Podcasts good.

And this morning, I got the chance to chat with Larry Jacobs from the Educational Talk Radio network. Larry does an awesome job of connecting with tons of people from lots of different arenas, posting them online, and making them available for anywhere, anytime.

We talked about a lot of stuff. Maine has 85 inches of snow on the ground. The Koch Brothers and turn of the century Muckrackers have a lot in common. Personal primary sources help kids connect past and present. Historical thinking is a better strategy for engaging kids than memorizing content. Social studies instruction should not be like the iOS Trivia Crack app.

Filed under: podcast, Podcasts, Uncategorized]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/blog-talk-radio-podcasts-and-personal-primary-sources/feed/3HT Podcast libsyn logo 250x250glennwpodcast blog talk radioTeaching with Movies: 20 tools for integrationhttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/teaching-with-movies-2015/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/teaching-with-movies-2015/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 03:06:18 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21353]]>Four times a year, I get the opportunity to work with 25-30 classroom teachers as part of an ongoing professional learning community. We chat about all sorts of things. Video games. Primary sources. Technology integration. Literacy standards.

Today, we spent the morning chatting with Don Gifford, KSDE social studies guru, about the upcoming state assessment and sharing strategies for encouraging discipline-specific writing skills. Evidence-based terms. Writing prompts. Good stuff.

The afternoon?

Movies.

We started by spliting up into two imaginary groups – parents and teachers. Each researched the following question:

Should movies be part of the instructional practice in a social studies classroom?

Then a “parent” and “teacher” met to discuss the question using the Structured Academic Conversation strategy. The idea was jump-start a deeper conversation about best practice and the use of videos / films / movies in the classroom.

The group discussed lots of great ideas and suggestions but it came down to one basic theme – having a clear purpose for showing the video. That purpose could be a variety of things:

historical content / knowledge

bias / perspective

emotional connection

supporting evidence

compare / contrast time, place, or people

film as primary source

We looked at an older History Tech post and I’d figured why not re-post some of that with a few updates?

—–

I’m probably encouraging the stereotype of social studies teachers / coaches showing movies every week so that they can read the newspaper, break down game film, or drink coffee. But I will always argue that the appropriate use of video clips and movies is great for kids.

The people at Truly Moving Pictures also have a couple of handy tools. The first is a nice PDF guide for parents and educators that provides suggestions for activating positive emotions during viewing. They also have extensive curriculum guides for a variety of feel-good movies. Not all would work in a social studies classroom but there several such as The Express and Glory Road that could be used.

Filed under: movies, Video, writing]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/teaching-with-movies-2015/feed/2ss plcglennwTip of the Week: David Rumsey Historical Maps and Georeferencerhttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/tip-of-the-week-david-ramsey-historical-maps-and-georeferencer/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/tip-of-the-week-david-ramsey-historical-maps-and-georeferencer/#commentsSat, 14 Feb 2015 20:17:32 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21330]]>In my perfect world as a map nerd, I would have grown up living my life as if I were David Rumsey. Make a ton of money and spend that money finding and archiving historical maps. Then figure out ways to share those maps with other people.

One of the easiest ways to find handy maps for use in your classroom is to use the

new MapRank search tool. MapRank enables geographical searching of about 12,000 maps from the collection by map location and coverage. Just drag and zoom in on the main search map and available historical maps from that area appear in a list to the right.

But if you’re ready for a real nerdy map experience, you need to play around with their very cool Georeferencer tool. Georeferencer is used to overlay old historical maps on top of modern interactive maps. The Georeferencer can also obviously be used to georeference any of the vintage maps in the David Rumsey online map library.

There are a ton of georeferenced maps already created which is handy but I think putting the Georeferencer tool in the hands of your kids is a great idea. Past and present. Historical and contemporary. Have kids create their own combined maps and then write about similarities and differences, changes over time, impact of geography on historical events, or how maps can be used to distort reality.

It’s Abraham Lincoln’s birthdate. Everyone knows this. Well, maybe not everyone. But for me, Lincoln’s birthday has always been one of the highlights of the year. Seriously. For as long as I can remember, February 12 has been a big day for me.

Lincoln has always been my favorite president. I can remember doing research, if you can call looking at his picture in the L volume of World Book Encyclopedia research, in first grade. And my appreciation for him has only grown since elementary school.

I grew up with the traditional rags to riches story of a self-made man, growing up in the wilds of the American west and becoming president. But he’s become much more complex as I’ve had the chance to spend time with him. Perhaps one of the most powerful professional learning experiences I have ever had was spending a week at Gettysburg College with historian Gabor Boritt.

Lincoln is more than just a tall guy with a really good media team. More than a guy who walked three miles in the rain to return six cents in chance and who split wood to make fences.

1. Lincoln was an awesome wrestler. So awesome that he is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame
Lincoln spent a lot of time wrestling – at least 300 matches. According to Carl Sandburg, Lincoln once challenged an entire crowd of onlookers after one match, yelling “I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.” Uncomfortable silence. Sounds of crickets. No eye contact. Lincoln’s exploits earned him an “Outstanding American” honor in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

2. He wasn’t always the nicest of people
As a young politician, Lincoln could be pretty harsh during debates and conversations. At a political event in Springfield, he apparently began bullying a man named Jesse Thomas. “He imitated Thomas in gesture and voice,” according to one account, “at times caricaturing his walk and the very motion of his body. The crowd yelled and cheered. Encouraged by these demonstrations, the ludicrous features of the speaker’s performance gave way to intense and scathing ridicule.” Thomas left the platform in tears though Lincoln eventually apologized.

3. He once fought a duel with swords
Okay. He almost fought a duel with swords. A Democrat named James Shields, challenged him to a duel. (See #2) As the challenged party, Lincoln had the choice of weapons and picked “Cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects.” Shields was half a foot shorter and no match for Lincoln’s long reach. Asked afterward why he choose these weapons, he said, “I didn’t want the damned fellow to kill me, which I rather think he would have done if we had selected pistols.” Once the parties arrived at the designated dueling ground, the dispute was settled and any swordplay was avoided. (Though, as we all know, Lincoln did get his cuts in during that whole vampire period.)

4. Lincoln carried both normal and perhaps a few unusual things in his pockets
The items in Abraham Lincoln’s pockets the night of the assassination were as follows: a pocketknife, a linen handkerchief, a sleeve button, a fancy watch fob, two pairs of spectacles, a lens polisher, a tiny pencil, tiny fragments of hard red and green candy, a fine brownish powder which appeared to be snuff, and a brown leather wallet The wallet contained a Confederate five dollar bill, and nine old newspaper clippings. Confederate money?

5. Grave robbers attempted to steal Lincoln’s corpse
In 1876 a gang of Chicago counterfeiters attempted to snatch Lincoln’s body from his tomb, which was protected by just a single padlock, in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Their scheme was to hold the corpse for a ransom of $200,000 and obtain the release of the gang’s best counterfeiter from prison. Secret Service agents, however, infiltrated the gang and disrupted the operation. Lincoln’s body was quickly moved to an unmarked grave and eventually encased in a steel cage and entombed under 10 feet of concrete.

6. Lincoln never slept in the Lincoln Bedroom
When he was president, he used the current Lincoln Bedroom as his personal office. It was there that he met with Cabinet members and signed documents, including the Emancipation Proclamation.

7. Lincoln personally test-fired rifles outside the White House
Lincoln loved gadgets and was keenly interested in the artillery used by his Union troops during the Civil War. Lincoln would often meet with inventors demonstrating military prototypes. Although there was a standing order against firing weapons in the District of Columbia, Lincoln would test-fire rifles around the White House on what is now known the Ellipse.

8. He was a corporate lobbyist and lover of the railroad barons
Before he was president, Lincoln worked as a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad. He helped find and purchase roadbeds for future railroad expansions across the West. He also defended the company in court against landowners and farmers, receiving not just financial compensation for his work but free annual train tickets.

9. He is related to a famous actor
Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks, was a distant relative of Tom Hanks. This makes the president and the actor fourth cousins, four times removed.

10. He hated his name
We use the term Honest Abe and Abe Lincoln. But you wouldn’t have used Abe in his presence. He valued his escape from poverty into dignified life and thought that “Abe” was beneath him. Even his wife called him Mr. Lincoln.

Filed under: civil war, gilder lehrman, history, politics, president]]>https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/10-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-abraham-lincoln/feed/2hjqr1glennw#METC15 sessions – Google, close reading, and other assorted tech goodnesshttps://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/metc15-sessions-google-close-reading-and-other-assorted-tech-goodness/
https://historytech.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/metc15-sessions-google-close-reading-and-other-assorted-tech-goodness/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 19:46:34 +0000http://historytech.wordpress.com/?p=21281]]>I’m in the beautiful state of Missouri at the 2015 METC in St. Charles. The #METC15 folks do a great job of creating a very positive learning environment centered around the idea of technology integration. So a good time for me to share some ideas and gather new stuff from others.

(I’ll be live blogging here throughout the day so be sure to refresh for most recent version.)

One bone to pick? Internet access is less than perfect. Way less than perfect. But I feel your pain – tech conference and internet can often be difficult to pull off.

I spent this morning working with about 50 educators during a two hour hands-on session. We discussed specific tech tools that can help integrate literacy skills into social studies instruction.

I always enjoy the longer sessions because we get the opportunity to share ideas and talk more with one another. It’s not just some sort of 45 minute app showdown. We focused on Google Earth and its very cool Historical Imagery widget, Padlet as a collaborative document analysis tool, and Canva as a digital storytelling site.

The idea? We want kids to mess with a compelling question by analyzing and evaluating evidence – then create a solution that addresses the problem. Each of the three tools aligns to a specific part of that sort of C4 Framework inquiry arc.

We also quickly discussed the iPad apps – Storehouse and Adobe Voice. Both are very sweet digital creation tools.

Find the presentation and links to the resources, examples, and handouts here.

After lunch, I sat in on a session by Nick Cusumano who shared ideas of using Google Tools to focus on close reading into a variety of content areas. Some helpful ideas here. I liked his idea of using Google Forms, the DocAppender add-on tool, and the EdPuzzle add-on to gather the thinking of his students.

Following Nick’s session, Shannon and Parker and Jennifer Gosnell shared a variety of ideas for doing teacher professional learning. Get their presentation here. And this is not necessarily all applicable for classroom teachers with their kids but there is some stuff that you might find helpful

First rule of thumb? Focus on allowing teacher choice. It’s okay to design professional learning in a variety of ways including face to face, individual learning, on-demand / just in time learning. This is something that we should also be doing with our students.

Start by asking what they want – AND how they want it delivered – using Google Forms. A surprise for them? Very few of their teachers want things delivered via email. Kids are the same way. I love Remind for this.

I also like the idea of creating a YouTube channel for 30 second clips that highlight stuff teachers / kids need to know or be able to do. Their sample was 30 Seconds of Google by Greg Lawrence.

What about 30 Seconds of Historical Thinking? Modeling how to source a document or to how to contextualize a document in 30 short seconds? I like this idea.

Something else I liked for teachers was creating a one page textual summary of a tool or idea and posting that page in places where teachers hang out – such as on the copy machines or on the back of the faculty bathroom door. What might that look like for kids?

The last thing I liked was their Tech Smackdown using a tournament bracket idea.I have seen teachers use the bracket idea to battle historical characters or historical events. They also suggested using Speed Geeking. This format would also work well with kids to share research on specific topics – basically another way to jigsaw information.

Last session of the afternoon? Media Literacy in the Digital Age by a guy named Bill Bass.

Question of the session? What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Media literacy has to be a part of that conversation. It’s no longer just about reading and writing text. But there are different definitions to the term.

But one way to think about media literacy is Bill’s quote:

It’s not about PowerPoint. It’s about presenting, convincing, persuading, explaining. It’s about evaluation. It’s about choices. And it doesn’t matter what class kids are in – this needs to be part of the conversation in every content.

Bill also suggests that the definition also includes the idea of responsible digital publishing, not just the creation of content. He suggests that we need to train our kids to create and publish online content that looks like this or like this.

So we need to train kids to effectively analyze content and appropriately produce / share content.

These are just the sorts of skills that we need to train our kids to be good at in the social studies. Sourcing. Contextualizing. Asking good questions about bias and perspectives. This perhaps one of the most difficult skills to develop is putting personal bias aside when asking these sorts of questions.

The new Zoom In tool and the Stanford History Education Group have great tools for training kids to do this. Bill just demo-ed a few images from the Boston Massacre – a perfect example of training kids to ask better questions. (Want to try this yourself? Head back to one of the earliest Tips of the Week ever.)